1. Field of the Invention
In street and highway maintenance when a pavement is generally well aged and worn with roughness and cracks, the practice is usually to resurface it with a layer of asphalt concrete to extend the life of the existing pavement rather than to dig out all of the existing pavement and completely rebuild the total structure, except in extreme cases where the condition of the pavement is so poor that it is necessary to remove the whole existing pavement and reconstruct a total new pavement
The invention is a sheet of asphalt impregnated cotton fiber placed in the upper structural section of either 1) local, 2) highway, 3) freeway roadway pavement or 4) parking lots immediately beneath the new layer of asphalt concrete to strengthen and waterproof the pavement with a membrane 99.9% impervious to water and prevent reflection cracking through the new top layer of asphalt for ten years and longer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various forms of proprietary so-called stress relieving interlayers have been tried by numerous street and highway departments with limited success because the cracks from the old pavement reflected through to the new surface of the asphalt concrete overlay as early as 6 months after placement on the old pavement. Furthermore, the waterproof characteristics of the pavement are not improved in most cases because the membranes do not limit the passage of water into the rock leveling and base courses of the pavement which weakens the whole pavement structure.